Wednesday, August 12, 2009

On Aug 12th, Xora announced the acquisition of Gearworks following in the footsteps of Antenna/Dexterra, continuing the consolidation in Enterprise mobility. Phillipe Winthrop spoke with Jim Hemmer, CEO of Antenna, on the consolidating nature of enterprise mobility pure-play vendors and the need for platform vendors to provide robust end-to-end solutions to enterprise customers.

Both Xora and Gearworks partner with wireless carriers to provide location-based field force management tools on mobile devices. The combination creates a larger player to better compete in the crowded Mobile Workforce Applications space as vendors seek the attention of fewer wireless carriers. The transaction also enables Xora to offer customizable apps to its mostly out-of-the-box solutions.

The Xora management team will run the combined entity and the VC backers have agreed to invest $8.5 m which is over the combined $50 m previously invested. Investors include Downtreader, BlueStream, Split Rock and Rho.